III Points: "All About Connecting People"

S. Pajot October 6, 2014 9:00AM

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"Maybe it was crazy. But we believed."

Out of nowhere in the summer of 2013, Miami's David Sinopoli and Erica Freshman unveiled their vision for something called III Points, a sprawling three-day festival that aimed to unite our city's disparate creative communities -- and perhaps even help forge the future of the Magic City's cultural identity.

Over the course of a weekend in October, this enterprise would take over galleries, bars, and warehouse spaces throughout Dade County's hippest neighborhood, Wynwood. It would boast bold-name international DJs and bands, alongside local musicians and noisemakers. It would stage interactive exhibitions, graffiti seminars, strange happenings. And it would lure programmers, hackers, and gamers to dark rooms for workshops and hangouts.

"Music, art, and tech -- those were, are, and will always be the core principles of III Points," Sinopoli says, as if repeating some mystic mantra.

No doubt, this fest sounded awesome. But it also seemed quite possibly overambitious. And yet, with only three and a half months, the organizers spun the whole thing together.

"Last year, we were just catching up to our own idea," Sinopoli admits, recalling the 100-day scramble to sort out the thousand details of III Points' inaugural edition. "But there was this moment when everything synced up."

The most significant clinching factors for the debut festival were commitments and support from a few major players on the alternative music scene, including British independent record label Young Turks and the Red Bull Music Academy, as well as James Murphy, the DFA Records co-founder and former LCD Soundsystem frontman.

"The first big score was Young Turks," Sinopoli remembers. "We were at Coachella and we were hanging out with them. They were just our friends at that time, but they heard our idea, and they said, 'Jamie xx is down.' So alright -- we knew we had a headliner.

"Then the next development that made us say, 'Wow, this is happening,' was Red Bull, and they brought in James Murphy. Just like boom, boom. And it was on."

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